The present invention relates generally to online marketing research and, more particularly, to a system and method for screening and ongoing evaluation of members of research panels for conducting such marketing research. With the advent of the Internet, traditional marketing research has been rapidly transformed. In particular, given the immense potential of merging the power of the Internet with proven market research practices, market research companies have been striving to distinguish themselves in the marketplace. One means by which this has been accomplished is through optimization of the composition of the research panel utilized to conduct a particular research study.
Many market research companies maintain a pool of potential panelists, or “members,” each of whom may have been invited to join the pool based on certain selection criteria. Each member completes an enrollment questionnaire the information from which the company uses to compile and maintain a profile for each member. The information contained in the profile, either alone or in combination with a screening questionnaire, or “screener”, enables the company to select members to serve as panelists for a particular market research study. For example, for a market research study involving marketing of a product targeted to women between the ages of 35 and 55, the company would be best served by selecting panelists whose profiles indicate that they are members of the targeted gender and age groups.
In view of the fact that participating in such studies is time consuming, in order to persuade qualified persons to participate in the studies, incentives are offered, often in the form of reward points. Typically, a member earns and accumulates such reward points based on the number of surveys he or she completes, and the length of time required to complete the survey. Reward points may be redeemable for a variety of goods and services. It will be recognized that there will be members whose sole purpose for participating in a research study is to acquire reward points; indeed, there will be members who manipulate the system to maximize their accumulation of such points, often at the expense of the validity of the information gleaned from the member. Additionally, because not every member is eligible to take every survey presented to them, members may compromise the validity of their responses from one interaction to another in order to maximize their opportunity to participate in a specific study.